


in circuits round you

by smartlike



Category: Ocean's (Movies)
Genre: M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-19
Updated: 2015-12-19
Packaged: 2018-05-07 17:22:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5464748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smartlike/pseuds/smartlike
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Resting his head against the cell wall, Rusty would like to say that if he'd known how it was going to turn out, he just wouldn't have answered the phone when Danny called or turned him down in the cafe, but no one lived this life this long if they spent any energy conning themselves, so he knew it wouldn't have made a difference.</p>
            </blockquote>





	in circuits round you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GotTheSilver](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GotTheSilver/gifts).



> This is like, barely a pairing fic? It's more about their friendship/a Rusty character study with little hints at the more there. I hope the in-between-ness of this works okay for what you were looking for! Happy Yuletide!

Rusty was seven months off the job, the last three spent spinning his wheels in London, making a systematic survey of every kebab shop in the city and stopping by Roman's a few times a week to irritate him by leaving grease-stained fingerprints on his most expensive electronics while refusing to answer questions about whatever gossip he had heard from whatever low-rent criminal he was working for that week. Technically, Rusty was waiting for Basher to be back from some mess in northern Africa so they could find something to get up to, but in reality he was a little at loose ends and a lot avoiding the fall-out of Danny's divorce.

Or, more accurately, he was avoiding the fact that there was no fall-out, that Danny had told him about signing the papers practically in passing during a Sunday-afternoon cross-country call and then hadn't called again, just an idle text here and there about movies he had been watching or ridiculous things Ruben had emailed him. Rusty shouldn't have expected more, Danny didn't get out of the game for Tess, but still, Rusty had thought maybe. So instead of sitting around LA finding new ways to take money off Topher and his friends, waiting for Danny to show up with something like it was fifteen years ago, Rusty had booked a flight to London and taken up residence in Basher's flat. 

He was sprawled out on the excessively velvet sofa, eating a currant scone and studying the blueprints of a villa in Marrakesh when Danny called. Rusty licked a few crumbs off the side of his thumb before sliding it across the screen.

"Why d'you think everyone Basher knows except us is a complete fuck-up?" Rusty noted the best way out of the villa and sent Basher a plan he could feed to the other guy on his job, make the idiot think it was his idea, get the job done and come home. "Does it reflect badly on us somehow?" He closed the laptop and settled further into the couch.

"Hmm." Danny's voice didn't sound as far away as Rusty would have expected. "Probably. He has terrible taste." 

Rusty nodded and finished the scone, waiting, listening to the background noise behind Danny, placing the accents he could hear and realizing what was happening just a beat before Danny asked, "Where's the best espresso in London?" His voice was studiously neutral and Rusty rolled his eyes, standing up a touch too quickly, catching his balance with a hand pressed to the sofa arm. "Jet lag apparently gets worse as you get older."

Rusty gave directions to a cafe a few blocks from Basher's, slipped on his shoes, and walked over, ordering a drink and sitting down to wait. He hadn't seen this coming, which still surprised him. Getting out of the game didn't mean they weren't still Rusty-and-Danny- their thing wasn't just the con- but there was more space between them now. Rusty couldn't be still, couldn't rest in place, had to be on the job, and the idea of Danny settled into a real life made Rusty twitch, so they drifted a bit, let their orbit pattern move further away from each other and by the time Danny had called, the "Tess and I got divorced again" dropped between a story about one of Saul's wife's sons trying to learn how to play poker and all of Danny's thoughts on the new Bond film, Rusty had apparently stopped being able to predict his next move if he wasn't right in front of him. 

Twenty minutes later, Danny slid into the chair across from Rusty, a smile hinting at the edge of his mouth and Rusty smirked back, eyes rolling again, the entire exchange built into his body via muscle memory after all this time.

Danny nodded his head at Rusty's silk shirt, "Ridiculous." Rusty raised an eyebrow, still waiting, so Danny said, "Linus owes someone a favor, but he's on a long game in Mexico and I was bored."

"He asked you?" Rusty signaled for the waiter, pointing at his espresso and holding up two fingers. "I thought he gave up trying to get you back on a job at least a year ago?"

"Nah, he told me he was going to ask you since you were in London." Danny leaned back. "I offered to come over."

Rusty considered, pulling at his sleeve. Danny stopped stealing things because it wasn't fun anymore, because he didn't need it the way he had before. He didn't get sloppy, but after Willy Bank, Danny had just slowly stopped until Rusty realized Danny had been off the job for two years. When he asked, Danny had nodded his head a little and shrugged and that had been that. Apparently some people could change and when Rusty spared a minute to think about it, he wondered if that meant he should have changed by now, too. There was a small stain on his sleeve and he rubbed over it with his thumb before looking back up at Danny.

Danny smiled, just a quick ghost of it across his face, "Like I said, bored." Rusty watched Danny's lips, didn't speak. "I haven't seen you since," Danny paused, "--since Saul's wedding, I guess."

Rusty lifted one eyebrow, he'd seen Danny twice since Saul's wedding, once at his and Tess's house for dinner, after Isabel left the third time (probably because Tess felt sorry for him, which hadn't been necessary), and once at Ruben's casino just about eight months ago. Rusty hadn't realized it then, but Danny and Tess must have already been separated, because Danny had ended up tumbled in Rusty's bed, lips pressed to his neck and it was an old, familiar thing, but not the kind of thing that happened anymore, not since just before Danny went to jail.

Danny shook his head. "Linus needs our help. We got him into this."

Rusty scoffed. "We definitely did not." Rusty had tried for ten years to convince Linus that a bit of assistance in a pinch was rarely worth whatever favor you ended up owing and it was not his fault the kid couldn't get that. "Besides, Linus has needed our help more often than not and you were still out."

Danny nodded, didn't come up with another bullshit reason to explain why he was in London, looking for a job after four years of nothing at all. 

They were both quiet for a minute as the waiter dropped off the espressos, Rusty stirring in a sugar, Danny taking a quick sip and wincing a little at the heat. Rusty looked up at Danny and he stilled with the cup hovering in the air in front of his mouth. Rusty understood the question Danny was asking with the careful set of his shoulders, the hesitant tilt of his head when he spoke, but the truth was Rusty didn't know the answer - he didn't know if it was okay that Danny was here, except in the way that it was always okay, so he tipped his chin down a little, pursed his lips and leaned back in the seat. Danny grinned, just for a second, and his shoulders relaxed a bit as he finished the espresso in one long gulp.

"I need the reason," Rusty said. He never needed a reason, really. He almost always took the job in general and definitely always when it was Danny, but that was what he always said, and if they were going to do this, then they were going to do it right.

"I can't get back in alone. Or with anyone else." Danny pushed the espresso cup towards the center of the table. "I might've gone soft, all that time off." Danny leveled him with a look that was slightly closed off and Rusty nodded.

That was the truth then, so "okay," and Danny grinned again, more solid this time, and started explaining the job.

Rusty pressed his index finger into a bit of coffee-stained sugar at the edge of his cup and sucked it into his mouth, considering. "There's no way that's do-able." He rested his fingertip on his lip. "Too many people watching."

Danny nodded, "Right, definitely." He glanced around for the waiter, then back at Rusty, eyes wide and amused. "So, what's your plan?"

Rusty remembered when Danny came to him with the plan and Rusty just filled in the gaps, figured out the details. He rolled his eyes. "Pay the check, let's go talk to Roman." He walked out and didn't wait for Danny to follow him.

*  
The thing, of course, was that the whole thing really wasn't do-able. You couldn't just steal an engagement ring from a publishing heiress while she's trapped in a house for a reality show, no matter how carefully you played the angles. So there they were, tucked in the corner of a jail cell, Rusty still in a hideous sweatshirt and Danny's hair sticking up in the back where he'd rested it on his folded suit jacket. Roman was probably out of the country by now and the asshole they were trying to help might be sending someone down to Mexico to rough Linus up. Rusty didn't mind that one so much, Linus probably deserved it - owing a favor to some 'roided out boxer was not a smart move in the first place.

Resting his head against the cell wall, Rusty would like to say that if he'd known how it was going to turn out, he just wouldn't have answered the phone when Danny called or turned him down in the cafe, but no one lived this life this long if they spent any energy conning themselves, so he knew it wouldn't have made a difference.

Danny moved on the bench beside him and Rusty lifted his head from the wall. "If I realized I'd really gone soft, I wouldn't have come over."

Rusty shrugged, wished he had some chips or something. "It wasn't do-able."

Danny hummed, shook out his jacket and magicked up a piece of gum from one of the pockets that Rusty took gratefully. While Rusty slipped the gum into his mouth and started chewing, snapping it just a little too loud, Danny said, "Walk it back, when did we go wrong?"

"When you tried to steal Saul's wallet and I offered to help you make it up to him?" Danny laughed and Rusty looked up, the jail seemed pretty run down, the cameras were likely just video, no audio. "Roman's signal interrupts worked, the package was delivered, I was inside." Rusty had been inside, hidden under a bed after following a route that a guy Roman knew had programmed the cameras to avoid. He nodded at Danny, shifted on the bench and held his hand out a little, waited.

Danny stared back at him, eyes darting around while he thought, lips quirking downward before he said, "The music?" They had sent in an iPad programmed to play some music they couldn't air so the producers would have to deal with it, distracting them. Rusty didn't blink, holding his gaze. Danny sighed. "No. Not the music."

When Danny had bumped into Saul at the track, pressed one second too long and come away with Saul's fingers a vise grip around his wrist instead of the wallet he was expecting, Rusty had choked a little on the funnel cake he was eating, shocked someone interested in stealing anything in Atlantic City didn't know who Saul was. Then Danny had quirked one eyebrow and shook his free wrist in something like a wave and Rusty had realized Danny knew exactly who Saul was. Saul had started in on a suitably terrifying stream of threats, but Danny's eyes had stayed on Rusty, smiling at the powdered sugar sprinkled over his trying-too-hard vintage shirt, and Rusty had moved to intervene before really thinking about it. Success that looked like failure had been Danny's MO from the beginning.

Danny kept staring, another few seconds of thinking then, eyes closed, "Camera 5 was still on."

"Camera 5 was still on." Rusty leaned back against the wall. This, however, was just failure that looked like failure, which didn't really suit either of them.

Danny had been distracting the producer, had talked his way into coming back to the control room after a dinner date, all awed and impressed by the idea of seeing a real-live television studio, while she was all awed and impressed at the idea of seeing under Danny's suit. He had triggered the camera program that allowed Rusty into the house, disabled some electronic door locks, and had convinced the producer to clear out the room for a few minutes while she showed him around to make sure no one was monitoring the video feed when Rusty made his move. But he hadn't remembered to disable Camera 5, which was controlled manually and not by the program, and which was pointed right at the suitcase where the ring was kept. Two seconds after he entered the room, a loud British voice had announced, "Everyone please go to the garden." And then a minute later, Rusty was being dragged out of the house.

"You haven't gone soft," Rusty said after a few minutes of silence, the gum smacking on the last syllable. There was a small chance Danny had gone soft, but four years was a long time off and this job wasn't do-able. "Maybe around the middle."

Danny poked him in the side, two fingers cold under the thick material of Rusty's black sweatshirt. Rusty pressed back into it and Danny let his fingers slacken, resting lightly on Rusty's skin. "Not everyone can stay in constant motion, Rus."

Rusty nodded, remembered Isabel laughing at him as she had packed her suitcase, running a hand over his cheek and saying, "I'll see you when you circle back around, then?" Which was the way of things, he moved on, always, but only ever in a circle, always stopping back at what mattered, always pausing for a while even if he couldn't stay when people asked him to.

"That's what they say," he said to Danny now, Danny's fingers pulling heat from Rusty until their skin was the same temperature, until Danny's fingers felt like an extension of his own body, holding him in place. "But maybe I shouldn't slow down yet." Danny moved his fingers in a slow circle, frowned. "Not until we're out of here at least?"

Danny laughed. "Just wait. Linus'll get us out and then we'll owe him a favor for once."

So Rusty shrugged, popped the gum. "Maybe he'll give us something thing fun this time." He leaned into Danny's side to wait again.


End file.
